Dr. Emma Silverman: But I want to now turn to Tom for the second half of the presentations
to give us some broader context for von Steuben's life and what we know about his sexuality. So,
Tom, the contemporary public interest in Steuben's sexual identity is part of a growing awareness and
hunger for LGBTQ history that took place before the gay liberation movements of
the 1960s and 1970s. Can you contextualize what we do know about von Steuben's life
by telling us about gender sexuality, and especially about same sex desire in early America?
Tom Foster: Thanks. And you're absolutely right that as historians we are interested in context to
best understand his life and what that means. And I'm going to think of myself as standing rather
than trying to sit between two bar stools, because that is a great metaphor for being uncomfortable.
And I'm not quite uncomfortable actually at all, now, in terms of this context. There
is definitely a queer context for the 18th century in Europe and also in America. And so
for von Steuben's context, by the time he comes to Valley Forge there there's generations
basically at that point, decades of awareness through publications, popular print media
newspapers, and also just urban life. And circulation of individuals.
And in particular, this is occurring across Europe's urban centers. And so it isn't really
isolated. It's pretty much across western Europe. And there's probably the most work,
at least that I'm familiar with. It's been done on London and there's a fair amount of
scholarship that has been written about for, I would actually say decades now also that's
been established. So this is probably familiar to a lot of people in the audience already.
If you're interested in pursuing some of the websites that have more information,
I would draw you to Rechter Norton's work or the work of Randolph Trumbull is also are both really
key individuals. Early on and continuing a lot of the work.
And so in London, if I could talk about Molly Houses, for example, to give us one example
that's been mined to really try to understand a significant social and cultural phenomenon that
emerges. And this is really in the first half of the 18th century again, were decades prior
to Valley Forge. We do see reports. So if I could back up, there's actually something of
a morals campaign that's occurring. And you have undercover agents infiltrate these Molly Houses.
The Molly Houses are essentially social clubs, inns, if you will, where
men are gathering in something of a --- it's a closed community. A closed circle of friends,
essentially. That's why you have these individuals who sort of pose as members and then write up
all that they observe. And the writings are really a combination of salacious and entertaining,
I think, for some readers. And it mirrors some of the fictional accounts that are also out
there about queer sexual in the eighteenth century circulating in the European press.
And what I think really significant for us is that you see reports of slang, a common slang that's
being used among the members which is really a key sense of some sense of community formation.
You see a sort of cross-dressing. But it's the way it's written about is really theatrical
that you have cross dressed individuals performing marriages, performing, and in great detail,
like writing about in a very campy theatrical way, childbirths. So, a cross-dressed man who's
given birth like a wooden doll, grabbing the others and wailing and carrying on. And so
for me, when I read those, there's a real sense also of us and them that's beginning to form.
And one of the things I want to do tonight in my comments is talk about LGBTQ history.
But I think the elephant in the room really is heterosexual history. And how are we handling
monuments and museums and other sites and problematize that heterosexual history.
So that it is not so unaccommodating or resistant to introducing individuals like von Steuben
in other words, our understanding, I think, of the sexual landscape of
this time period is problematic. We're still sort of caught up in a romanticized heterosexual
model. Then you end up with these individuals that seem anachronistic if we have to spend a
lot of time trying to understand them, whereas if we actually started with the right context
you may not even need a session on von Steuben, then it would just make sense to people
And yet another example of fluidity, maybe gender expression or sexuality.
So what's key about the Molly Houses, though, is in that context,
you have this sort of celebratory culture that's emerging, but you have executions that were
occurring at the same time. In other words, the individuals that are there writing about this,
it's not just for a fun exposé. There is a morals campaign. This is a capital charge.
There are men who are being executed at the time for sodomy.
And so it's in that context that you also, I think, can argue for a sense of resistance.
But I also think it's a really key context for understanding what that social party if you will,
is doing in the face of that context. In other words, it's not in some very welcoming,
supportive environment that this is flourishing. So that's the European context for von Steuben.
But in the context of America, we don't see Molly Houses. But what we do know is that,
again, for generations. There's been awareness and that's through circulation of print from
there are actually newspaper articles about Molly Houses being raided.
There are newspaper articles in Boston newspapers about arrests
for individuals who are cruising in parks or committing sex acts in parks in London.
And so and you see a level of detail that talks again about slang being used, about specific
parks in London named. So there's in some ways also a subversive element to it, and that it
is giving voice to and educating Bostonians and other port cities, other Americans about
what's emerging, what's possible in life, essentially in urban centres. And it's kind of
fascinating to think about that print circulation of information. There's also, of course,
a out of circulation of individuals at this time, especially in the port cities. And so you have
just circulation of information and knowledge from individuals. And there would still be a
handful of examples of court cases, court records, I think, that also draw attention to the issues.
By the time von Steuben, I think what's most common and what gives historians a lot to work
with are expressions of love among members of the same sex. And we see this with men
and with women. It's a number of sort of high profile individuals Hamilton, as one who exchanges
love letters with a close male companion. George Washington is another where you see
sometimes these devolve is the wrong word, but spark, I should say, questions about
whether or not George Washington was gay. So Larry Kramer has labeled George Washington as
gay. So von Steuben is not the only founder in that camp, if you will. And so we do see this.
I do want to sort of name drop a number of books, if people are interested in pursuing this
topic of same gender love, which has really become romanticized in the 18th century
and through the 19th century. And so those relationships provide cover for individuals.
I think it's wrong to assume all of those individuals are gay, to use anachronistic terms.
But I think what's important to note is that the society does not look skeptically or concerned at
two men who express love and are companions or two women in the same way as they would in the
twentieth century. So, in the early twentieth century, that really becomes pathologized and
psychologized and is seen as deviant, immoral, wrong, if you will, psychologically disordered.
In von Steuben's time and into the 19th century, there is still a
cultural embrace of same gender love. And so again, some of those cases would be
individuals who are sexually interested in each other, who are acting on those
sexual interests. Some would not be. In fact, I would say the majority would not be.
And so there's a number of books that have come out recently about this thinking early on.
Actually, one of the earlier books would be God...Richard Godbee's book Overflowing
of Friendship. Thomas Bell Kierski has a new book called Bosom Friends about President James
Buchanan as a bachelor and his friend companion William Rufus King. Charity and Sylvia, I think
I saw in the chat, is also another wonderful book by Rachel Hope Cleves. Tt's a wonderful read and
it explores that lifelong relationship between two women and set up a household and what that means.
And Jen Manion's new book, Female Husbands. It's also an excellent study. And so there are a number
of books that are sort of expanding out from this world of same gender love to look at transgender
expression or gender fluidity, which I think is such a great direction for the work to go in.
We do see this and
actually we do see this across class, across race, across gender. So broadly, it's in the culture.
Sergio Luciana's work comes to mind. Enslaved men. My Brother Slaves. It's about bonds among enslaved
men. I have a chapter in my book, Rethinking Rufus, and bonds among enslaved men. And C. Riley
Snorton recent book, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity would be another one.
So I got sort of the broad context. I'm looking at the clock. So to
stop there and turn it back to you, Emma.
Dr. Emma Silverman: Yeah. Thank you so much. And I know you've dropped so many incredible
references. And I saw a couple of questions in the chat asking for links to those.
So perhaps after this, I'll get some of the citations from you and we'll send
them out to everyone who attended the event tonight. So you all will
have those resources if you are able to write them down quickly enough.
But the question I want to follow up. So you've given us a good sense of the, as you said,
the sexual landscape that von Steuben is operating in. So he's not an aberration. This is
the landscape of gender and sexuality of the time.
I...I'd like you to also speak about not only the actual history of the time,
but also the public response that's happening now. So how does this sort
of public interest in von Steuben as the Revolutionary War General relate to
a longer, persistent interest in the sexuality of the founding fathers? And then can you speculate
why is this something that's so interesting to the public that it keeps coming up again and again?
Tom Foster: I've only been zooming for a year and a half. I'm sorry. So I was muted.
I am fascinated by this question.
As an early American historian who also is interested in pop culture, I probably about
10 years ago became really interested in how pop culture was depicting early American history.
And certainly even prior to that in the classroom, thinking about
how do you use a Disney film like Pocahontas to really sort of explore what themes they are
creating anew, what history they're teaching. And when you think about
how little the most of the public is exposed to academic articles, for example, I mean,
they really circulate among academics. I think you can make an argument that a Disney film like
Pocahontas is probably teaching people history more than many other sources.
So I thought, actually it's not just a fun exercise, it's really important. I ended up
writing a book called Sex and the Founding Fathers, which you had in the slideshow
that traced this long public interest in the personal lives of the founding fathers. And
so I think there's six chapters. I've forgotten now at this point.
The cover individuals, including George Washington and Ben Franklin, John Adams and others.
And Hamilton. And it looks at how characterizations and things about
their personal lives, whether there's infidelity or monogamous marriage or the greatest romance of
the American Revolution or the gay general. There's all these sort tropes that come up.
They change over time for the same individual and often it's not because new sources are
produced. In other words, it's not because someone found a treasure trove of letters
that shed a new side. It's often stuff that just keeps getting research related. But
authors tend to emphasize an aspect that they think the readership is going to be interested
in at the time. And so you can really map it to a broader narrative of the history of sexuality.
What kinds of things are people embracing from me? In the book, I conclude and I argue that
we do this because we're always seeking ways to connect to that founding generation. I mean,
they embody the country and the nation. It's a way to really connect to the
country and the nation in that way to understand who these individuals are.
And they're so far removed from us. We...this is said over and over again. Right? As you work with
public history sites, you know, whether it's a statue that's just so unapproachable and cold
how do you actually bring that to life and talk about a person? Although I think Dave Lawrence
is probably the perfect perfect person to bring a statue to life and make you want to listen to it.
So that I think sex is used in that way. You know, it's very familiar.
I should shouldn't be so specific. I would say intimacy or personal lives: love, romance
and including sex. That's familiar to people, it seems accessible. The problem is I'm a
historian of sexuality. The first place I go is how different intimacy and personal lives
and sexuality are now, from the 18th century. It's the last avenue, I would say, to try in
terms of trying to access these individuals. I mean, those are completely different worlds.
And if I could just use the example of John and Abigail Adams, we think of them as the
greatest romance of the American Revolution or they've been written about in this way.
We are able to build that argument based on letters because they're separated.
In itself it is interesting that they're separated if they are so intensely in love. And in fact,
they're often not separated by an enormous amount of distance. So in some ways,
the separation is chosen. It's their chosen mode of being a couple, at least for John Adams.
And if you think about 18th century marriage, the position of women in the late 18th century within
marriage, I mean, with coverture laws, women are entirely dependent on husbands. They're not
allowed to enter contracts. I think this is also probably familiar to people who can't enter into
lawsuits on their own If they're married, if they have a job, their wages are legally belonging to
their husband. In the area of intimacy, there is no such thing as sexual assault within marriage.
I mean, it is the husband's right to have sexual access. And so there is no consent
to sexual intimacy. Is it just sort of a few of the really glaring ways
in which it's hard for us to sort of look at an 18th century marriage and the position of
women, in particular, in that union and in some way connect with it. It is not our world.
So that's sort of the book in a nutshell.
But there's obviously an entirely different point for von Steuben here that has already
been mentioned in terms of him being a gay general. And I think you had really great
comments. And I think Dave did also, about the importance of recovering gay history for LGBTQ
people. And so then we're into a different level or a different topic really, of representation.
So, I...I'll just add before I wrap this question up, I completely understand the
need for recovered histories, for whatever groups are marginalized and left out of dominant
narratives That's a wonderful and important exercise. It's a real need for us to understand
our histories more broadly, more inclusively .That's desperately needed in this country.
That being said it does bump up against what I was saying earlier about problematizing the sexual
landscape in general and broadly, and so that once you actually, if you cement in place terms that
are just such shorthand, like he's a gay general, without having problematized the broader landscape
I think we're missing an awful lot there, as much as we are capturing something else.
In other words, I understand why it's done politically, and I think it's also
very personally important for people, but it is unfortunately bumping up against a broader sort
of restructuring that I think is so important for us to understand broadly in early America.